"No no. I'm not emigrating."
"Who said emigrate? If you wish to be an American, be an American. But you have visited the Soviet Union in the past and you can visit it once again and stay a while. Then return to your own country."
"Why?"
"You have crazy ideas and we have crazy ideas. Perhaps yours can help ours."
"What crazy ideas? I mean, yours. I know what mine are."
"It's not something to discuss until I know if you are perhaps willing to help us."
Morrison, still sitting back in his chair, was vaguely aware of the buzz about him, of people drinking, eating, talking - most of them from the conference, he was sure. He stared at this intense Russian woman who admitted to crazy ideas and wondered what kind of-
He stiffened and cried out, "Boranova! I have heard of you. Of course. Pete Shapiro mentioned you. You're -"
In his excitement he was speaking English and her hand came down on his, her nails pressing hard against his skin.
He choked it off and she removed her hand, saying, "Sorry. I did not mean to hurt you."
He stared at the marks on his hand, one of which, he decided, was going to be slightly bruised. He said quietly in Russian, "You're the Miniaturizer."
Boranova looked at him with an easy calm. "Perhaps a little walk and a bench by the river. The weather is beautiful."
Morrison held his lightly damaged hand in the other. There had been a few, he thought, who had looked in his direction when he had cried out in English, but none seemed to show any interest now. He shook his head. "I think not. I should be attending the conference."
Boranova smiled as though he had agreed that the weather was beautiful. "I don't think so. I think you'll find a seat by the river more interesting."
For one flashing moment, Morrison thought her smile might be intended to be seductive. Surely she wasn't implying -
He abandoned the thought almost before he had put it clearly to himself. That sort of thing was pass‚ even on holovision: "Beautiful Russian Spy Uses Sinuous Body to Dazzle Naive American."
To begin with, she wasn't beautiful and her body wasn't sinuous. Nor did she look as though anything of that nature could possibly be on her mind and he himself, after all, wasn't that naive - or even interested.
Yet he found himself accompanying her across the campus and toward the river.
They walked slowly - sauntered - and she talked cheerfully about her husband Nikolai and her son Aleksandr, who was going to school and was, for some strange reason, interested in biology, even though his mother was a thermodynamicist. What's more, Aleksandr was a dreadful chess player, much to his father's disappointment, but he showed signs of promise on the violin.
Morrison did not listen. He occupied himself, instead, in trying to recall what he had heard about the Soviet interest in miniaturization and what possible connection there might be between that and his own work.
She pointed to a bench. "This one looks reasonably clean."
They sat down. Morrison stared over the river, watching, with eyes that did not really absorb it, the line of cars filing along the highway on their side and the parallel line on the highway on the other side - while sculls, looking like centipedes, plied the river itself.
He remained silent and Boranova, staring at him thoughtfully, finally said, "You do not find this interesting?"
"Find what interesting?"
"My suggestion that you come to the Soviet Union."
"No!" He said it curtly.
"But why not? Since your American colleagues do not accept your ideas, and since you are depressed over this and are seeking a way out of the dead end at which you have arrived, why not come to us?"
"Given your investigations into my life, I am sure you know that my ideas are not accepted, but how can you possibly be sure that I am all that depressed over it?"
"Any sane man would be depressed. And one has only to talk to you to be certain."
"Do you accept my ideas?"
"I? I am not in your field. I know nothing - or very little - about the nervous system."
"I suppose you simply accept Shapirov's estimate of my ideas."
"Yes. And even if I did not - desperate problems may require desperate remedies. What harm, then, if we try your ideas as a remedy? It will certainly leave us no worse off."
"So you have my ideas. They have been published."
She gazed at him steadily. "Somehow we don't think all your ideas have been published. That is why we want you."
Morrison laughed without humor. "What good can I possibly do you in connection with miniaturization? I know less about miniaturization than you do about the brain. Far less."
"Do you know anything at all about miniaturization?"
"Only two things. That the Soviets are known to be investigating it - and that it is impossible."
Boranova stared thoughtfully at the river. "Impossible? What if I told you we had accomplished the task?"
"I would as soon believe you if you told me polar bears fly."
"Why should I lie to you?"
"I point out the fact. I'm not concerned about the motivation."
"Why are you so certain miniaturization is impossible?"
"If you reduce a man to the dimensions of a fly, then all the mass of a man would be crowded into the volume of a fly. You'd end up with a density of something like -" he paused to think - "a hundred and fifty thousand times that of platinum."
"But what if the mass were reduced in proportion?"
"Then you end up with one atom in the miniaturized man for every three million in the original. The miniaturized man would not only have the size of a fly but the brainpower of a fly as well."
"And if the atoms are reduced, too?"
"If it is miniaturized atoms you are speaking of, then Planck's constant, which is an absolutely fundamental quantity in our Universe, forbids it. Miniaturized atoms would be too small to fit into the graininess of the Universe."
"And if I told you that Planck's constant was reduced as well, so that a miniaturized man would be encased in a field in which the graininess of the Universe was incredibly finer than it is under normal conditions?"
"Then I wouldn't believe you."
"Without examining the matter? You would refuse to believe it as a result of preconceived convictions, as your colleagues refuse to believe you?"
And at this, Morrison was, for a moment, silent.
"Not the same," he mumbled at last.
"Not the same?" Again she stared thoughtfully out over the river. "In what way not the same?"
"My colleagues think I'm wrong. My ideas are not theoretically impossible in their opinion - only wrong."
"While miniaturization is impossible?"
"Yes."
"Then come and see. If it turns out that miniaturization is impossible, just as you say, then you'll at least have a month in the Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Government. All expenses will be paid. If there's a friend you would like to bring with you, bring her, too. Or him."
Morrison shook his head. "No thanks. I'd rather not. Even if miniaturization were possible, it is not my field. It would not help me or be of interest to me."
"How do you know? What if miniaturization gave you the opportunity to study neurophysics as you have never studied it before - as no one has ever studied it before? And what if, in doing so, you might be able to help us? That would be our stake in it."
"How can you offer me a new way of studying neurophysics?"
"But, Dr. Morrison, I thought that was what we were talking about. You cannot really prove your theories because you cannot study single nerve cells in sufficient detail without damaging them. But what if we make a neuron as large as the Kremlin for you - or even larger - so that you can study it a molecule at a time?"
"You mean you can reverse miniaturization and make a neuron as large as you wish."
"No, we can't do that, as yet, but we can make you as small as we wish and that would amount to the same thing, wouldn't it?"